Holding on to Reality, Part 3 [edited/posted]

As an alternate approach to Borgmann’s writing in this third and final section of the book, perhaps a quick recap of where the author ultimately intends to go is in order: Borgmann, over the course of more than one hundred pages of meandering and overexplanation of marginally illustrative technological history, attempts to express a few relatively straight-forward ideas:

1)     Technological information, like cultural information before it, is both about and for reality; in addition, it actually will become reality

2)     The expectation that information theory coupled with technology would allow for a better understanding and use of information about and for reality, thus a richer version of reality, has not come to pass; instead of a richer version of reality, individuals are likely to be overwhelmed by the superabundance of information

3)     Individuals are likely to be unable to evaluate information any longer, and also may begin to live life more remotely (in every sense) as their consumption of information displaces actual experience of that which is relayed in the information – and they would be better served to recuperate older, truer expressions of information (especially natural information)

Addressing the first point, the problematic conflation of information about or for reality, and information as reality, Borgmann would have been more successful had he acknowledged the inconsistencies of this line of thinking, or at least pointed out counter examples. Borgmann’s example of information becoming reality, the music CD that expresses the music thus is the music, can be countered by other examples – such as the architectural drawing created using computer software and stored in a fully digital form. Unlike the musical CD that requires technology to read its expression, an architectural drawing cannot be ‘realized’ without human intervention. While 3-D printers may allow for some tangible fabrication of whatever is represented within the drawing, at present there are still substantial sorts of information expressed through ‘building’ that cannot be taken by any coupling of technology and information. In addition, while information expressed in certain a computer program may be both the data and metadata (or information for reality and information as reality), its fundamental lack of tangibility makes this point slippery. Perhaps Borgmann also should, as stated before, further explore notions of the ‘real’ and ‘reality’ to aid the reader in seeing stable connections between information and reality.

As for the rosy but unrealized future vision of a brighter reality, Borgmann is entirely too biased to clearly write about this. His writing continually returns to the value of natural and cultural information at the expense of technological information, though he makes no effort to analyze what could be a false opposition. The proliferation of information available because of the Web certainly poses very important questions about evaluation of information resources for bias and validity, as well as about sustainability of the various information forms (as all digital information is ultimately stored in some physical space, on a server somewhere). Making bland pronouncements about the lack of knowledge students must now have, or about the disappearance of reality, do little to engage in meaningful discourse and instead just trumpet a reactionary egotism. A more productive approach would involve speculative exploration, significantly less redundant (and tangential, at best) historical contextualizing, and pursuit of the elaborated weaknesses resulting from the Web-centric information explosion.

Finally,  regarding the specter of detached netizens with endlessly voracious appetites for undifferentiated information – it seems clear enough that Borgmann, like anyone else  who is nervous about substantial societal change, represents extreme possibilities with little substantial evidence.  As obvious enough through his frequent reference to thousands of years of Western philosophical and religious thought, Borgmann’s approach to conceptions of information is firmly rooted in millennia of traditional explorations of the subject.  This being the case, I attempted a patient reading of his entire work, (with frequent rereading, and rereading again, of whole chapters), searching for value as well as points to pursue further with an aim of reconciliation. The main thought that occurred to me was that Borgmann may have tumbled down a slippery slope from an understanding that new information forms seem to include the expression of existing forms and their relationship to ‘reality’ and also offer something completely new, and to an untenable conclusion that technological (particularly Internet-created/related/stored/delivered) information does away with other pre-existing forms of information and fundamentally, negatively affects (or stands in for) reality. Perhaps the intervening decade would make a conversation with the author substantially different than I would expect from his writing? Regardless, an assumption of lasting value in a variety of forms of information seems reasonable, and certainly Borgmann’s questions about virtual education and immersion of individuals in, (and the global human record in the form of information stored on/through), the Web should be pursued. This pursuit would probably be more productive following a slightly different angle of attack, though – perhaps in terms that stressed synthesis of differences, recuperation of traditional notions of ‘reality’, and the durability of older expressions of information?